New plant

I had planned on buying something at Wallace's Garden Center (Bettendorf, IA) even before we left the house. I like Wallace's -- they took me seriously once, long ago, their selection is generally healthy and well-maintained, and they've never banned me from the store.¹ I didn't know what I would be buying, but I was going to try to come up with something.

I'd sort of been expecting an Agave, since I seem to be having an Agave phase, and since I've gotten Agaves from Wallace's in the past,² but they didn't have many, and the one that was the best size and price is one I'd already bought from them. I'm also unexpectedly appreciative of Epipremnum aureum lately, but they didn't have any varieties of that that I didn't already have either. So it wound up being an Anthurium.

This is, of course, ridiculous, since I already had 224 Anthuriums (out of 883 plants total). I mean, if there was any genus I didn't need more of, it would be Anthuriums. But it seemed like something new. I have Anthuriums that bloom white, pink, orange-pink, orange, red, purple, and red-purple, but I did not yet have one that bloomed white with red flecks.


So this seemed like a chance to add even more genetic diversity to the group. The ID tag wasn't helpful; it just said that it was an Anthurium, produced by Twyford, and asexual propagation was prohibited. Where a cultivar name should have gone, it just said "KS.1." I looked that up when I got home, and found nothing relevant on Google. Twyford doesn't even seem to have a publicly-accessible website anymore. I did eventually find a list of plant patents owned by Twyford. Only one plant on that list was an Anthurium with white-and-red-spotted spathes, 'Peppermint Gemini.' This was initially very exciting to me, since 'Gemini' and 'White Gemini' have produced the most seeds by a huge margin,³ and it seemed reasonable to think that 'Peppermint Gemini' would be equally prolific, but when I got into the details of the patent, it turned out that 'Peppermint Gemini' was a sport of 'White Gemini,' which itself was a sport of 'Gemini.' So all three look different, and apparently all three are different on some level, but they're also so closely related to one another that crossing 'Peppermint Gemini' with something else is not that likely to get me anything that I couldn't have gotten with 'White Gemini' or 'Gemini.' Disappointing.

On the plus side, it was only like $5, the flowers are pretty, and if it is more or less genetically equivalent to plants I've already got, this is at least a way for me to produce even more seeds even more rapidly. Which is something that I totally needed. [eye-roll]

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¹ Yes, it's that easy to get me to like your store. Pretend you find me interesting, talk to me briefly, carry plants I like and then give them appropriate care, and don't throw me out. (Talking to you, Pierson's.)
² Specifically A. bovicornuta 'Reggae Time,' now dangerously and alarmingly huge, and A. 'Blue Glow.'
³ I don't have the exact numbers handy, but the last time I checked, the seed parent was either 'White Gemini' or 'Gemini' for about 80% of the seedlings I've got in the basement right now. A few plants consistently abort their fruit before the berries are fully mature, a couple will produce a couple seeds every now and again but seem to be difficult to pollinate, and there are a couple that steadfastly refuse to produce fruit no matter what I do.

The Quad City Botanical Center, Part 3 of What Turns Out to be 3

This last post (Part 1; Part 2) on the Quad City Botanical Center (QCBC) doesn't really have a lot of organization to it, unlike the other two. I'm just trying to cover the plants I think you'd want to know about that I hadn't already covered, basically.

The plant I found most interesting was one I hadn't heard of before:

Dichorisandra thyrsifolia.
Dichorisandra thyrsiflora is in the Commelinaceae, the family of such easy indoor plants as Tradescantia pallida and Callisia fragrans, and yet I'd never heard of it. That's probably because it's a little big for a houseplant:


and there could be cultural issues I'm not aware of besides. I mean, I would be surprised if it were particularly hard to grow indoors -- I can't think of anything else in the Commelinaceae that is -- but maybe.

Glasshouse Works does sell them, and claims they're easy to grow. Perhaps someday I'll try. The flowers are pretty impressive:


The camera continues to have difficulty reproducing certain blues: the flowers are more of a rich, dark blue-violet than the medium blue they show as in the photo.

I also saw a plant at the QCBC that I'd previously only encountered in a specialty website that sold plants for terrariums (I no longer remember which one):

Kaempferia pulchra.
I initially thought it was yet another Calathea, but a nearby sign identified it as Kaempferia pulchra, which is in the ginger family (Zingiberaceae). I've never seen anyone growing it as a houseplant, so I can only assume that it's exceptionally demanding. Or maybe it's exceptionally slow to propagate, making it not worth the effort. Something: there must be something wrong with it. But, hey, pretty.

I was also impressed with the "red tower ginger," Costus barbatus, though it looked like the blooming was over a while ago:


Still, though, it was a nice big plant, which is impressive enough all on its own.

Costus barbatus.
The QCBC is very, very light on succulents, unfortunately. The only plant that was new to me was Euphorbia viguieri, which looks sort of like someone threw E. milii (thorns, flowers) and E. leuconeura (tuft of leaves at the top, longish, spoon-shaped leaves, narrow base that gets wider with height) together in a blender and split the difference between the two. It's not a very good picture, but that's okay, because it's not a very pretty plant:

Euphorbia viguieri.
Glasshouse Works sells those too.

There's one NOID that I'm particularly interested in: it was near the Carica papaya, and resembles it, but the leaflets are a lot narrower and more completely divided.


It's not impossible that it's just a Carica at a different stage of development, but I couldn't find any Carica leaves that looked like this in a Google image search. I also considered Schefflera, but couldn't find any of those that were particularly pointy except S. elegantissima (still better known as Dizygotheca elegantisisma), and these leaves should be much darker in color than S. elegantissima. (Cannabis sp. would be a possibility too, if not for the fact that, you know, it's not legal. Also I don't think Cannabis has leaflet margins that are that fancy.)

I know, it's one of those cases where looking more intently for an ID sign at the QCBC might have saved me a lot of trouble. But still. Any ideas?

UPDATE: Grower Jim identifies it in the comments as Jatropha multifida.

And while I'm asking: I'm pretty sure I've seen a bromeliad inflorescence like this recently on another blog (Garden Adventures? The Rainforest Garden?), but when I tried to find it again, I couldn't. I didn't remember seeing anything like it before, when I saw it at the QCBC, so wherever I saw it must have been fairly recent. The plant itself didn't look like anything special: I would have thought it a Guzmania if I'd seen it without flowers.



UPDATE: Both Grower Jim and Rainforest Gardener agree that it's probably an Aechmea, even without seeing one another's comments.

Finally, a NOID orchid in bloom. The QCBC didn't have very many orchids at all, and this was the only one I saw that was blooming, but the color impressed me.


I'm leaving a lot of photos unposted, of course, but they may show up at some point later on. Or I might go back later and take new, better pictures. I think you get the general idea of the place regardless. Considering that it's only an hour away and I'm in a small rural Iowa town, I think it's a remarkable place.

Even if they won't let you buy the plants.

The Quad City Botanical Center, Part 2 of However Many

This is the second post about our visit to the Quad City Botanical Center (henceforth QCBC) a few weeks ago. (Part 1)

The QCBC building. Photo by Ctjf83 at Wikipedia.
The tropical plants area of the QCBC is divided up in a way that makes it feel relatively small, but the pamphlet the husband picked up says it's 6444 square feet (599 square meters), and 70 feet (21.3 m) tall at its tallest point. So there's room, and somehow they've managed to get some very big plants in there, even though their website says they've only been around since 1998. (Presumably some of the plants were of pretty good size before they were planted.)

My favorite, naturally, was the Pandanus utilis.

Pandanus utilis.
I tried to take a picture that would show the spiral arrangement of leaves, to explain the common name "screw pine," but the sun was behind the plant, and there was only so much I could do. This was the best one I got:


Seeing this one at the QCBC made me even more determined to get a Pandanus utilis of my own someday, though. Not that I needed the push.

Odds are that more visitors are impressed by the coconut palm, Cocos nucifera, than the Pandanus. It was certainly much taller, if nothing else:

Cocos nucifera.
And it did, I admit, educate me a little as to how the coconuts are attached to the plant: I always thought they were held closer to the foliage than that. (You may have to open the picture in a separate window to see the coconuts.)

Not all the big, impressive plants were unfamiliar: the QCBC also has the largest Murraya paniculata I've ever seen. I can't imagine how overpowering the smell, when it's in full bloom. The people who clean the room must hate this plant. (My own makes a mess of the husband's office on a regular basis, and it's a tiny fraction of the size of this one.)

Murraya paniculata.
They also had a big, healthy Philodendron erubescens that was trying very hard to pull down the building:

Philodendron erubescens (?).
I suspect there is a law that all botanical-garden-type places have to have at least one gigantic Alocasia or Colocasia somewhere.

Alocasia sp.? Colocasia sp.? I'm not really getting any better at telling the two apart. . . .
I was surprised to find a Duranta at all (it's not a plant I think about a lot, or expect to see anywhere), but finding a really big, chartreuse one was a pleasant surprise:

Duranta erecta 'Golden Edge.'
No flowers on the Duranta, which is too bad. I want to smell one again sometime and see whether I still think it smells like cookies.

There were pothos plants climbing, literally, the walls (you can see some of them in the background of the pictures from Part 1), but this particular one got to the ceiling by climbing a support column.

Epipremnum aureum.
I also saw a Syngonium podophyllum with mature leaves at the QCBC. I'd seen this before, but it'd been a long time:

Syngonium podophyllum.

The plant that most impressed me, though, of all the plants there, was their Caryota mitis (fishtail palm), which was not only enormous --

Caryota mitis.
-- it was also flowering. Rather a lot.


The flowers aren't pretty, but apparently they don't have to be in order to work.


And this very new flower below looked like an octopus to me, which makes me like the species way, way more. I've never had good luck with C. mitis indoors (in my experience, it's hard to find one that's not buggy), but if they can grow octopi/-puses/-pods, then I think I need to rethink my position.


They also had a few other very large plants that I'm leaving out of the post because they didn't photograph well, including a Chorisa speciosa (silk floss tree) that nearly touched the ceiling and was dropping pink flowers on everything underneath it. I'd heard the name before, but it wasn't a plant I was familiar with at all. In person, it was maybe a little too huge and a little too far away for me to relate to, but still. Always nice to meet new folks.

There were also quite a few gigantic banana plants (Musa sp.), and a very large but badly lit Breynia disticha (snowbush, also sometimes Breynia nivosa). Maybe I'll get pictures of those the next time we go.

New Plants, Part II

Continued from Tuesday, here's the second half of the recent batch of new plants.

Haworthia tessellata. (Some people would say H. venosa var. tessellata.) Ace Hardware, Iowa City, $6.40 on sale from $8.
I got one of these a couple summers ago from Lowe's, which turned out to have mealybugs, so it didn't last long here. Didn't expect to see another specimen this soon -- it's possible that I've only seen this species for sale twice in my life -- but since I have, we're going to try it a second time. This photo doesn't show the coolness of the leaf pattern very well, alas, but you can kind of see it if you open the photo up full-size.

Hemigraphis exotica. Earl May, Iowa City, $3.
I'm not especially a fan of this plant, but it was cheap, and I felt like I sort of owed Hemigraphis another shot; like with the Haworthia, the first attempt ended quickly. In that case, the problem wasn't bugs: I didn't have a bright enough spot, so it lost color but limped along anyway, then one week I forgot to water it in a timely fashion and whoops! it's dead. So it gets one more chance to impress me. But only one.

Kalanchoe marmorata. Ace Hardware, Iowa City, $7?
I thought this was another retry -- I had an offset of K. gastonis-bonnieri a while ago that never managed to take, and I thought that's what I was getting here, but I think what I actually got was K. marmorata.

I'm not thrilled about this, and I'm especially not thrilled that I didn't figure out which Kalanchoe it was until I'd already uploaded the photo, 'cause now the file name is wrong, but oh well. Too late now.

Kalanchoes and I have a mixed history, tending towards bad: I have a hard time getting them enough light (tomentosa, bracteata), and the ones I can get enough light on, I tend to overwater (luciae, orgyalis). More recent attempts (millotii, prolifera) have been better, though.

Peperomia obtusifolia 'Gold Coast.' Ace Hardware, Iowa City, $4 on sale from $5.
Sometimes, in the excitement of buying plants, I pick up something I don't need or want, just because it happens to catch my eye at the right moment. This may be one of those plants, but that's okay: at least it's something I like. And I could use it to propagate from, if nothing else.

Pilea peperomioides. Quad Cities Botanical Center, Rock Island, IL, $5.
Did you know that the Quad Cities has a Botanical Center? I didn't. We visited last Friday, and I took a million photos, which will take some time to get sorted out, but there will probably be a post sooner or later about this.

They also sell a few plants, which is where I saw this. I'm a little unsure about the ID: the tag said Pilea peperomioides, but someone had written "Pepperomia" [sic] on the pot in black Sharpie, and Peperomia 'Jayde' is awfully similar-looking. I'm fairly confident that this is the Pilea, though: Peperomia 'Jayde's leaves come to a point at the tip, and are concave at the petiole, neither of which apply to this plant.

I was excited to see it; ever since Ivynettle mentioned it in the comments for this post last August, I'd been trying to keep an eye out, but I wasn't expecting to find one.

Syngonium podophyllum gold whatever. Earl May, Iowa City, $3.

Syngonium podophyllum pink-spotted whatever. Ace Hardware, Iowa City, $4 on sale from $5.
Both of the Syngoniums were varieties I'd seen and wanted before, but I've only been able to find them in four-inch (10 cm) pots for $8. Even for a pretty Syngonium, that's too much.

I don't know the name of either variety; they weren't tagged. The first one I've seen before, called 'Gold'-something, but I no longer remember. The second one might be 'Confetti,' though I think I've seen multiple cultivars with pink spots like that.

Tradescantia (?) NOID. Reha's Greenhouses, Wellman, $5.
Last, a NOID. I suspect it's a Tradescantia, but Callisia or Cyanotis hasn't been ruled out. It strongly resembles Tradescantia pallida, but it has elements of several things: the leaf shape and fuzziness is like Tradescantia sillamontana, the undersides of the leaves are purple even in lower light like T. spathacea, and when it's gotten enough light to be properly colored-up, it resembles a short, stubby T. pallida, though the color isn't quite as deep.

Reha's was unable to tell me anything more than, they don't believe it's the same species as T. pallida, and it needs very bright light in order to color up properly.

New Plants, Part I

Almost all of these were walkaways previously, so you'll have seen several of them before. The reason I'm buying plants I'd earlier rejected is, I recently wound up with some money that had weird strings attached: one of the strings was that I spend it all on houseplants. (I'm not making this up. November has been a hell of a strange month. Mostly good. A little bad.) So, you know, twist my arm.

This is the first half; I'll post the second half Friday.

Anyway. In alphabetical order by genus, because we've got a perfectly good alphabet and nobody else is using it:

Aeschynanthus longicaulis, or Aeschynanthus 'Black Pagoda.' Ace Hardware, Iowa City, $5.
I won't know for sure what this is until it blooms; if it has a green flower, it's A. longicaulis, and if it has an orange flower, it's A. 'Black Pagoda.' I'm guessing 'Black Pagoda' is more likely -- it doesn't seem likely that a hardware store in Iowa would be selling species Aeschynanthus for $5 -- but nothing's ruled out until there are flowers.

I bought it because it's ornamental on its own, plus Aeschynanthus is one of the few gesneriads that I feel understands me, so there's a resonable chance it might survive long enough to flower or propagate or something.

Agave americana variegata. Reha's Greenhouses, Wellman, $5.
And the Agave americana collection is more or less complete. I now have a plain gray-blue one, one with white leaf centers, and one with yellow leaf margins. No doubt there are other varieties, but I feel like three's probably adequate. If this goes at all well, they'll soon outgrow the house and/or stab me in the eyeball, but we're not going to think about that right now.

Bought mainly to complete the set; I was a little wary of Reha's because this time I saw mealybugs on lots of stuff, but I checked this one over several times and it seemed all right, plus I neemed it when it got home. I'll still have to watch it, but I think it'll be okay.

Aglaonema 'Sparkling Sarah.' Ex-job, Iowa City, $30.
I'd remembered the name as something having to do with "Susan," but it turns out to be 'Sparkling Sarah.' I would have gotten it the first time I saw it, if I'd had the money at the time, so I didn't have to think long about this one. Wish the picture'd turned out better, though.

Aloe dorotheae 'Sunset.' Reha's Greenhouses, Wellman, $5.
I'd thought my Aloe phase was over, but they keep making more of them, so I've gotten a bunch.

In bright light, this will turn red, and they had a few that were still red in the store, but I got this one instead, because it had four offsets. I figure I can make red happen if I really want red, but four good-sized plants for $5 is a good deal.

Aloe NOID? Wallace's, Bettendorf, $4.
Wallace's was a little disappointing, this trip: we're not so close to the Quad Cities that we can go all the time, and I'd kind of hoped they'd have more stuff. I mean, nothing wrong with what they had, but I didn't see anything that made me think ohmygod I have to have that. (Also disappointing: Christmas music already. Et tu, Wallace's?) Still, this Aloe got my attention, mostly by being a really pretty shade of green, and I wound up buying it. (Anybody have any idea on an ID?)

Aloe x 'Fire Ranch.' Reha's Greenhouses, Wellman, $5.
I'd passed this up earlier in the summer, without even realizing it -- it looked pretty plain in the store. But then I saw a picture of Karen715's plant on Life Among the Leaves, and I decided I liked it well enough to hunt for. Turns out Reha's had it all along.

Mine doesn't look much like Karen's (smaller, greener), but I'm relatively certain it's the same plant: there was a tag, at least.

Cyclamen persicum. Wallace's, Bettendorf, $5.
I explained why the Cyclamen yesterday.

This photo both amuses and disturbs me: the two flowers up high, combined with the edge of the pot's curve, form a happy face. Once I saw it, I could no longer un-see it.

Walkaways Part 10

Okay, well. As promised when I posted about my newer plants last Wednesday, these are the plants I didn't buy. As a group, they're probably more interesting than the ones I actually bought, but I have my reasons for not buying them.

The first three, two succulents and a cactus which happened to get my attention, were at Lowe's.

Euphorbia polygona cv. 'Snowflake.'
I would have bought this in a heartbeat, but for the fact that all of the Euphorbias with this kind of "corn-cobby"¹ habit I've ever bought (specifically: E. anoplia, E. enopla, E. horrida var. noorsveldensis) have gotten etiolated² really easily, and seem to be considerably worse about it than the larger-growing columnar species (e.g. E. pseudocactus, E. ammak, E. grandicornis). Though I love the look of the plant and would like to have one, I don't really want to buy one just to watch it slowly turn grotesque and unhealthy.

Kalanchoe eriophylla.
According to the tag, K. eriophylla is similar to K. tomentosa (panda plant) except for being more of a low, trailing plant. Which I don't mind trailing plants, but the genus Kalanchoe and I have a long history together which has not been satisfactory to either party, and K. tomentosa and I in particular aren't good together. And it's not like it's ever really going to be beautiful, right? Only fuzzy.

I mean, not that beautiful is a requirement, but it's nice to be able to think it's a possibility.

Melocactus azureus.
I just liked this one. I'm not sure why I didn't buy it; it may be that I thought I had too many bluish cacti at home already (Pilosocereus pachycladus, Cereus peruvianus, the one that may or may not be Browningia hertlingiana, Leuchtenbergia principis). Kind of regretting the choice, now that I re-examine the picture.

Next up, plants I didn't buy at the ex-job:

Begonia 'Soli-Mutata.'
I maybe should have asked for some leaf cuttings, to take home and propagate. I couldn't have afforded the whole plant, but I'm reasonably confident in my ability to start new plants from leaves, which is way cheaper.

Begonias and I don't get along amazingly well, but it might have been worth a try. The texture on those leaves is pretty cool.

Selaginella flabellata.
No spikemosses or clubmosses ever, at least not in an extra-terrarial sense. This one isn't even especially pretty, though it kind of looks like a piece of arborvitae (Thuja spp.) or something, which is interesting. The common name, according to the tag, was "cypress fern," which pleases me, because it's another instance of a common name where all parts of the name are technically wrong. It's not a fern, it's not a cypress.

Zygonisia Cynosure 'Blue Birds.'
I don't normally include orchids in the walkaway posts, both because orchids usually get their own posts and because they usually don't count as walkaways: most of the time, they're far enough out of my price range that I can't ever even be especially tempted.

I wasn't especially tempted by this one either, although: I'm told that this was the only plant from the most recent shipment of stuff that WCW purchased, I haven't seen it before, or even anything terribly similar (Zygonisia is a cross between Aganisia and Zygopetalum, and I've seen Zygoneria, which is a cross between Neogardneria and Zygopetalum. So I can say I've seen a relative, maybe.), and the pot was small (4" / 10 cm), which briefly gave me hope that it might be more affordable. (Sadly, no: $35.)

That said, I took more pictures than just the above, so as long as we're here anyway, we may as well stop and look at them:




Okay. Now on to Wallace's, in Bettendorf, IA.

Pilea microphylla 'Pink.'
When I first saw this, I thought it was kind of neat. It's at least something I'd never seen before, and hadn't even imagined, so points there. And it was cheap ($5), and belongs to a genus I generally find congenial.

But then there's the part where it's, you know, kind of ugly. While I was looking around, at one point a mother and son (who looked about 10-13) came by, and the mother was talking to someone on the phone. She told the son to hurry up and pick something out for his grandmother so they could go, and then she went back to talking on her cell phone. He started reaching for this plant, which she noticed. She stopped her conversation long enough to tell him, in a what's-wrong-with-you tone, Not that one! What are you thinking? That looks half dead.

I couldn't help it. I laughed. She was right! It looks way better close up than it does from a distance, and despite the name, it's more sort of an ivory than a pink. Maybe for a small terrarium, though.

Aglaonema 'Cutlass.'
This was a serious temptation. Not that I don't already have a lot of Aglaonemas, but I like the look of this. They had a couple other Aglaonema varieties that I hadn't seen before ('Juliette' and 'Mystic Marble'), which were both sort of like what you'd get if you averaged 'Maria' and 'Jubilee:' just your basic Aglaonema with medium sized, elliptical leaves patterned in dark green and silver. Technically I hadn't seen them before, but I'd still seen them before, you know? 'Cutlass' I like, though: I've seen a few Ags with long, narrow leaves, but nothing this extreme. Perhaps we'll run into one another again someday.

Adiantum sp.
Not a serious temptation -- what am I, crazy? -- but I thought the Adiantum was worth noting. As far as I can remember, this is the first one I've seen for sale anywhere in, literally, years. I miss things, and forget things, so maybe I've missed or forgotten a maidenhair fern here or there too, but still. You don't see Adiantum around. This is maybe because as soon as someone ships them here, they wither, brown, and turn to dust. Just guessing.

Anyway. What about yourself? Anything cool you've passed up lately? Or anything dull, even: we don't judge, here at PATSP.³

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¹ (Not a particularly good word, but the best I could come up with.)
² Etiolated: describes plants with thin, stretched-looking, and pale new growth, caused by insufficient light. Though they may produce normal-sized new growth if moved to a better location, the old growth won't bulk up to match.
³ Not technically true, but tell me anyway. I'll be nice.